Learn To Fly

Sometimes you've just gotta put your nose to the grindstone to learn how to fly:

Saturday Web Ramblings...

Got some posts in the works from last week and the weekend, but a bunch of smaller less-full-post worthy links here:

This is awesome! Beer commercials are the best!

Here's a post that looks at the unrealistic nature of video game currency and the probability of a universal global currency. I wonder what the effects would be (positive to third world or not?) of a unified global currency, and what about gold as that standard?

Wierd condom print ads.

The magic of being an analyst, promote something one minute while vilifying it the next.

Boing Boing has got a post looking at the economies of used vs. new books on Amazon.

Market Wire's got a summary study article with some interesting RSS info, nuggets I pulled out: Tuesday is the most active day in RSS readership, with Saturday the least active; Click-through rates (CTR) differs by more than 70 percent from Tuesday to Saturday; "Morning scanners" view the most content; late-night readers click through more.

I knew it! Even the French can't decide on how many of those greeting kisses to give!

Idiots. (wait till the end)

Very cool Vortex: (via Gridskipper)

Aye Aye Captain

Scotty's dead but warpspeed lives on. It seems that every time I post about how fast my connection is sucking down "stuff", it just gets faster! Case in point:



Stay tuned because after this post my connection will speed up so much I'll be making posts back in time!

Attitude To Go

Love this t-shirt I spotted on Gawker:



And just to let everyone know who reads this blog, we're better than everyone who doesn't ;-)

GoogleRoss

You've heard of EuroRoss. You've heard of Google. Now learn about GoogleRoss!

The Digital Divide

Mmmm, bandwidth. It's becoming increasingly clear that the combination of Super-High Speed Internet access and eMule is making my 40GB internal hard drive and 60GB USB external drive tinyer by the minute. I was creating this post because I had raved about getting 100Kb/s when I first jacked into this connection a couple weeks ago and happened to notice the following download speeds today:



Over double that speed! Then not even 10 minutes later while prepairing the caption and post I nearly pee'd my pants when I saw this:



Drool...

I can't wait to get my new tablet + desktop + 24" LCD + T1 line in Oct!

Home Coming

Internationalization is important both for gaining business knowledge and experiencing. It's also extremely important for your own personal development. Not only do you learn a hell of a lot about life in general, internationalization also gives you new ideas, views, thoughts, solutions and perspectives that you would have never had gained having stayed locally. To truely appreciate what you have you need just lose it, this holds true for friends, family, love and home. Last week I was reminded of just how great hangin' with the fam can be, thanks for the invite GP!



The beers were spot on. Can't wait for the next BBQ eh!

Willy

I hurt my Willy Wonka last night. Just thought you should all know ;-)

Broken Dreams

One of the best things about moving out of my place in Pforzheim last week was that it was finally "time". After 2 years off and on, 110 Gymnasium had finally lost its charm. This feeling had been building up since returning in March, roomate nerves, broken waterheater, dwindling number of people in Pf etc. etc. This was highlighted by a swami of crazy events in the last week I was there. First off was a 4 police car and 2 paddy wagon near street gang fight that almost happened at street level right below my place at 3am in the morning. Second came the mysterious suicide of one of the people in another appartment. The last straw was a mear 3 days before leaving where a newer tenant downstairs in a drug induced rage kicked through the back door glass, bled all the way upstairs (a lot of blood), kicked through another glass door to get to his shared (with his girlfriend) appartment window, yep kicked that in too. The cops where at the place till 2:30AM that night. Great. Because it happened on Friday night they didn't clean up the glass, blood or doors until Monday morning. BRUTAL!

This is a pic of the back door. I thought it fit perfectly to my feelings of how drugs killed that guys future... broken dreams.

Every Rose

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

We both lie silently still
in the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside

Was it something I said or something I did
Did the words not come out right
Though I tried not to hurt you
Though I tried
But I guess that's why they say

Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

Yeah it does

I listen to our favorite song
playing on the radio
Hear the DJ say loves a game of easy come and
Easy go
But I wonder does he know
Has he ever felt like this
And I know you'd be here right now
If I could have let you know somehow
I guess

Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

Though it's been a while now
I can still feel so much pain
Like a knife that cuts you the wound heals
but the scar, that scar remains

I know I could have saved a love that night
If I'd known what to say
Instead of makin' love
We both made our separate ways

But now I hear you found somebody new
and that I never meant that much to you
To hear that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife

I guess every rose has its thorn

Yum Tum Crepies

When in France... was having a crappy work day Thurs so I thought I'd spice up my desert with a couple home-made crepes. Preping the sauz, look at those sexy-ass jogging pants, yes it was late and I was in my jammies ;-)



A steaming hot pan that I'm about to flip... I have as little confidence as you do that this will turn out well...



OHHH YEAH! My flipping skills show a flash of brilliance. You're treated to the end here as the 5 hundred second delay on my digicam means the chance of actually getting a live action shot is somewhere between zero and null :-)



Now that's a crepe! Too bad I got too much Nutella on the camera for the last pic ;-)



I'm hungry...

Weekly Links

Here's a bunch of stuff I found interesting, funny and weird from the past week that was:

CNET's got a list of the "Top 10 Internet Fads", but none of these are as cool as the Darth Vader Burger King promotion. Update: Obviously I've been playing around with the Darth Vader site, interesting how it can even know if you're thinking about something sexual but it ends the game by simply stating that you're thinking about something sexual. Looking for more interesting ones (I first beat it with "infinity").

Wow, when designing your company logo maybe it's a good idea to have that bad boy reviewed by a couple people first eh ;-) (via Boing Boing) If you don't see it then you are really in need of a weekend out on the town! ;-)



Don't have much confidence in your gardening skills but want to exercise your green thumb? Why not try "Flowers in a Can" :-)


Also found via Coolhunting was these coaster "heads" that I found hilarious:



An interesting post about the constraints surrounding your project.

A look into the future of windows-type windows mobility, very cool (watch the demo).

Finally, the awe-inspiring beauty-terror of military art can sometimes blow the mind. Case and point "Angel Flares":




Eery.

Have a great weekend everyone! :-)

It's Officially Started

It's only been 40 minutes from my "Let's Get It Started" post and things are already going great, the NHL players union ratified the deal so we officially have NHL hockey this year and the Bundesliga Pokal Tournament first round timetable came out today, of note the two best matches on the circuit:

20.08.2005, 15.30 Stuttgarter Kickers - Hamburger SV
21.08.2005, 14.30 TSG Hoffenheim - VfB Stuttgart

So we'll be going to both these games for sure, anyone who wants to join us (for one or both games) needs to e-mail me NO LATER than Sunday midnight as tickets go very fast for the small teams. Also we'll be partying it up hardcore the Saturday night in Stuttgart, plans are flex but for sure will be starting with a little CBP action right after the game and move from there :-)



Let's keep it going eh! :-)

Let's Get It Started

It's Friday, and after a terribly frustrating Thursday of work it's time to get the weekend rocking starting with this classic jingle that's guarenteed to put a smile on your face for the day. Go over to your nearest P2P (ahem, legal file sharing service) and enjoy the magic of Disney with "Les Poissons" from the Little Mermaid (lyrics via Radish-Spirit.com). Let's get this Friday rocking:



Nouvelle cuisine
Les Champes Elysses
Maurice Chevalier

Les poissons, les poissons
How I love les poissons
Love to chop and to serve little fish
First I cut of zeir heads
Zen I pull out zeir bones
Ah mais oui ca c'est toujours delish

Les poissons, les poissons
Hee hee hee, haw haw haw
With ze cleaver I hack zem in two
I pull out what's inside
And I serve it up fried
God, I love little fishes, don't you

Here's something for tempting ze palate
Prepared in ze classic technique
First you pound ze fish flat with a mallet
Zen you slash through the skin
Give the ze belly a slice
Zen you rub some salt in
'Cos zat makes it taste nice

Zoot alors! I have missed one

Sacre bleu, what is zis?
How on earth could I miss
Such a sweet little succulent crab?
Quelle domage, what a loss
Here we go, in ze sauce
And some flour, I think just a dab

Zen I stuff you with bread
It don't hurt, cos you're dead
And you're certainly lucky you are
Cos it's gonna be hot In my big silver pot
Too-da-loo mon poisson au revoir!

Moving On Up!

Well for those of you that don't know yet, EuroRoss is no longer a permanent resident of Pforzheim. That's right, even though I'm finishing up a project (hopefully a long term PHD-integrated one, more on that in a later post!) I've moved out to accommodate the renovation of the apartment I was staying in which commences next week. Compliments of my generous friend German I've been able to store my stuff (read: crap) at his place in Darmstadt while I spend the better part of the next 6 weeks backpacking around France, Northern Germany, Denmark and hopefully Italy/Sicily at the end. I'm trying to do that while tele-working on the project... well we'll see how that goes ;-)

Darmstadt is a relatively unknown city outside of Germany but it has many charms. One of which is the vibrant "art district" which was created way back by one of the local German kings of Hessen to foster the arts. The community is still quite alive today and is highlighted by this famous residence created by a famous artist, I paraphrase: "life and nature doesn't contain straight edges and corners so why should our living environments? Rather they should complement our surroundings with beautiful curves and colours". Tres cool:



Of course the place still needs a modern watering hole for the local "artists" to converse about Picasso, Monet, Da Vinci... and of course VFB Stuttgart! :-)


After moving in and checking out the local culture scene we'd worked up quite a thirst, off to downtown!



Thanks to German and his buddy "Server Dude" for hooking me up with some hardware for the project, now if I could only scrap that shitty FreeBSD in favour of windows we'd be all set ;-)



We checked out all the usual places "Park Place", "Pretzel Place", Irish 2 and finally "Cool Local City Place" at the end of the night. This place is totally unknown by everyone save diehard cool locals, it's amazing they even let us two geeks in!! ;-)



The best beer combined with a long night (3am morning actually) and funky atmosphere can really screw with your mind :-)

BBQ Again? Oh Yeah!

Certainly I won't be able to complain about not taking advantage of BBQ season this year! We were at it again with a couple of the oldtimer MBA gang at Swampna's last week, the only thing hotter than the sun was the spicey Indian chicken eh! Fantastic, and I love those disk things too! Anyways the afternoon started off by taking the short jump to Stuttgart which of course was accompanied by the now-required pitstop to CBP (Circle Beer Place), considering the number of pics I've sported from CBP I figured on posting one from a different perspective:



The hike up the mountainside to Swampna's place is quite the nature path:



On your marks, get set, GO!



Blew a tire ;-)



Max'in and relax'in:



Thanks Swampna and Cool B-Friend Guy for another great BBQ, see you at the wedding!

A Week Of Remorse ;-)

After over a week since the VFB Stuttgart - KSC Karlsruhe exhibition game debacle (3-2 KSC) I'm finally ready to post some of the pics from that great game (despite the final score). It was especially gratifying to see VFB play again in Karlsruhe last Tues as the first game I had ever watched in Germany was VFB at this exact same stadium for a UEFA qualification match (the DG Stuttgart Stadium was under construction at the time). Good times. Once again the brilliant (term used very lightly) weathermen predicted rain of which none arrived. There was some rioting after the match, but what else is new for soccer in Europe ;-)

Here's a great look at the stadium just before the game was about to start:



The crowd was packed for the game, chalk full of KSC fans anticipating an on field upset:



When the goals for KSC started going in the crowd went crazy with joy (click on the photo below for a quick video):



At halftime they had a parachutist come down from the sky and land on the centre of the field, pretty cool, unfortunately the video didn't come out so great:



Well it was a great game (especially for only 5 bucs and a free subway ride from Pforzheim to the game!) and at least it wasn't regular season! Here's looking forward to Aug 6th Bundesliga!

Living It Up!

Posting has been light lately cus I'm too busy living. Life is a game, you gotta play it hard. Follow my moto:

Work like an All-Star,



Party like a Rock-Star,



Bang like a Porn-Star!



:-)

Who says there's nothing free on the internet anymore! Today as I was buzzing through my feeds I came across Jeff Nolan's post about "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman and Oliver Wyman which coincidentally I had just added to my Amazon wishlist just a couple days ago. Not only that but I somehow scammed a free copy of the book just for being at the right place at the right time, not bad for a starving student! :-) In case you're wondering, the right place is Jeff's "Venture Chronicles" blog, and the right time is always since you'll be richer for checking it out (it's been on my blogroll for a while now). Thanks for the book Jeff!

Monday Funnies

Something to brighten up your Monday. You know when you're looking for a parking space and you finally find one only to realize that you won't be able to park in it because some other retard didn't park his car straight in an adjacent space? Well you're not alone my friend. Take a gander over on this Flickr group for pics of poor Yahoo employee parking jobs, some are funny, some are interesting and some just make you want to scream!



Also on tap for today is this video that was very well done: "Seven Words You Can't Say In Kindergarten", via Vowe.net.

Dream Monitor (good), Unbelievable OS (bad)

Warning: The following post comes from EuroRoss the geek ;-)

Wow, I just noticed my dream monitor from Dell (24 inches of pure joy) is $240 off (it's still a wopping $960 though so it'll have to sit on my "things to buy when I'm a millionaire" list). Also on that list is this cool $200 - $300 function key/wireless keyboard. Of course when I do get one, if Longhorn does this then I'll be moving on over to OS X.

My Two Favorite Things

Pretty isn't it? It's made of chocolate! Amazing.



Beauty and chocolate, my two favorite things ;-)

Old Post Alert

Just found an old post I was working on about Superbowl commercials that I never got around to finishing nor posting:

TiVo (who might not be around too much longer) also released some metrics on the most re-watched parts of the Superbowl. Of course one commercial didn't even get watched by anyone!

One of my favorite commercials (interesting to watch) was for the Olympus m:robe, of course the geek world did not share my sentiments. Ok actually here's the top ten from "The Raw Prawn" and they have it at #5, so maybe I wasn't sooo far off.

Can't wait for a new season of NFL to cleanse the last 2 years of Bucs incompetence, DO YOU HEAR WHAT I'M SAYING BUCS!?!?!



Go Bucs 2005/6!!

...and NHL's back!

BBQ Heaven

It's summer, the sun is out, perfect B-B-Q weather!

Of course you should go easy on the spliffy sauce! ;-)

Tour De Pforzheim

Well I finally got around to loading and formatting the pics from the weekend Tour De France appearance in Pforzheim (which I rushed back from Paris to catch, more on that later). The TDF has only ever been in Pforzheim once before in 1987, so it was a rare treat especially since I've never seen the TDF before and it's something that I definatly wanted to do once (and as it turns out ONLY once) but that I wouldn't go much out of my way to see it. For those of you who accuratly point out that Pforzhiem is not in France, you are correct :-) The TDF always has a couple stages that actually start or end in a nearby border country, so this is not abnormal. I guess this is for marketing reasons as well as the fact that the borders of France were not always like they are today ;-) So for those of you who missed it (snicker, read on for why), here's my photo montage of the day:

I thought this was hilarious. On the way to the track I saw this official TDF van parked next to a tow sign. The French just don't have any respect for German laws ;-) Obviously we were headed in the right direction :-)



Here's the bridge located downtown Pforzheim, notice the large "Hier Start" sign that's been there for the last month or so. This is important for later. I like the spraypainted bikes they strung up, very shick :-)



I had checked the TDF website the night before to confirm the start time. They had listed 9:45am as the "pre-start" and 10am as the "real start". At 9:30 I saw a parade start to come by the path, there was no way the race was going to start at 10, I was starting to get grumpy that I had woke up at 8 and waited for over an hour (to get a good view) only to realize I could have slept in my comfy bed for longer... as I would soon find out, much much longer. Click on the photo for a short video of "when the tour, goes marching in" :-)



I love these blow up air guys, the 67's (my favorite junior hockey team) have got one at the civic centre, I could watch them for hours... no I'm not stoned ;-)



Finally! The riders start to warm up. The crowd enthusiastically cheer them on as they slowly roll past, Ulrich of course gets the biggest cheers followed by a close second for Team CSC.



The man:



The Roo ;-) Love the shades :-)



Now here's the best part. After waking up at 8am for a published 10am start, which actually didn't even go until 11am, standing in a jam packed stinky crowd for over 2 hours just to watch the bicycles wizz by in 10 seconds... I didn't even get to see them wizz!!! Despite the sign (mentioned earlier), despite the path map showing my corner as part of the track, the bikers actually started about 250m west of my location, travelling west... this means I got screwed!

Brutal.

Moral: if you want to watch a stage of the TDF, go 2 hours after the stated start time and don't bother listening to the clueless organisers and make sure you follow the warmup cyclers so that you don't miss the start, at least the riders know where they're going!

At least I had some fun later in the day :-) Ride on!

On The Trail

Gotta love Cabot Trail Nova Scotia:

El Toro!

Someday I wanna be like the ex-Chicago Bull Denis Rodman and run with the bulls, ARIBA! :-)

MBA End Of Year Party

FYI: Tatiana's setting up a MBA end of year party, Saturday July 16th at 6PM at the school W1 terrace, 12 euros per person. They need help with BBQ, food, shopping and cleanup. E-mail her by Wednesday midnight to let her know if you're coming and how you can help.

Amazing World

Sometimes when I'm reading the news I'm overwhelmed by how interesting the world is... or how wierd it can get.

Interesting:

The top 125 questions facing scientists today.

High schools moving to laptops as opposed to textboooks. I thought this revolution would have already happened by now, unfortuneatly it's still taking some time to gain momentum.

How to start-up a restaurant from scratch.

Weird:

Cereality, a fest food style restaurant specializing in... cereal.

Funny and weird comeback on the critisism of the recent Channel 9 Steve Ballmer interview, especially since I just watched it about 10 minutes before finding this link. The best part about that interview was when Ballmer talks about corporate blogs and how he trusts his employees: "We trust our people to represent our company, that's what they're paid to do... you don't run any more risk letting somebody express themselves in a blog than you do letting them go out and see a customer on their own anyways".

This guy is self proclaimed weird:



Update: After thinking about it, I guess I'm pretty weird too:



Of course skating around in a circle could be counted as weird, but man was that fun!

Becoming A Paris-ite

Speaking of becoming more European, lately I've spent so much time in Paris that I've felt like I've been living there, making the transition from casual tourist to local incumbent. Learning where to go shopping for the best food/groceries, brushing up on my French/Quebecois and adapting to big city life is certainly fun. It's also great to stop focusing on tourist focused areas, attractions and restaurants and start building a network of places I just like to go to as a resident. Bard Bieres Brasserie is just such a place. It's absolutely rockin, great food (I highly recommend the pizza!), a selection of about a hundred beers from around the world (great selection of the hard stuff too!) and service not typically found on this side of the Atlantic. If you're in Paris and would like to get away from Paresian style cuisine, go check out the BBB, you'll thank me for it. Better yet gimme a call and I'll meet you there! ;-)



The beer wall, you can't see them all in the pic, but (pun alert) you get the picture ;-)

To Be EuroRoss, Or Not To Be EuroRoss

Like the change of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader, EuroRoss has somehow gone to the darkside. I don't know when the switch actually happened, more likely it was a slow convergence over the last 2 years, but it was clearly apparent that I've become (at least partially) European as today I actually had toast... with Nutella. This might not seem like a big deal, but to put it in perspective when I first had arrived in Europe over 5 years ago I absolutely hated Nutella. It was just way to sweet for mornings, breakfast or toast. I wasn't that much into crepes either (oh buy has that changed in the last month or so with the amount of time I've spent in France!). What has the world come to? I blame the lack of NHL hockey this year as the driving force behind my change ;-)

Poker Anyone?

We just found out last minute that one of our monthly poker buddies can't make it tomorrow (well technically tonights game), anyone interested in joining? No prior poker experience needed ;-) Deets: Monday night (today!), $20 buy in, Texas hold em', BYOS (bring your own snacks/smokes/suds). It's no World Series of Poker (hey greg buddy, how did you do at the tourni?) but we have a great time none the less :-)

First one to e-mail me today gets in... no dogs :-)

What the...?

Is this what they call rain? Is this actual rain that was forcast? Amazing! Well not so amazing since it dumped rain and lightning for 30 minutes and then left never to return. The weather predictors suck, but not as much as the European affinity for undie-swimwear! ;-)

Bryan Willey's 2 Cents

Sometimes when you ask for someone's 2 cents you get a whole lot more. (good job Stevie for getting this one in!)

Resilience

The inspirational word for today is resilience, Londoner's have got it and I respect that:

DFB

The DFB (Deutscher Fussball-Bund) Pokal (quite frankly the best soccer tournament in the world where teams from all levels compete for the championship) have announced the matchups for the 2005/06 tournament, and it was a great draw: VFB Stuttgart heads to a rival Baden-Wurttemberg team Hoffenheim and the Stuttgart Kickers host loely Hamburg ;-)

Get your tickets fast!

One More Drop In The Bucket

They preached thundershowers and rain for today, no rain came. The only drop was another in the bucket of life. Today's Gadling photo of the day via here sums it up beautifully, they predict rain again for tomorrow, we're waiting on the edge of the storm to see if it will come:



Enjoy your weekend everyone, I know I am...

The Proof Is In The Puding

Not much going on today, working on some things, bumming around the net:

White guys can't dance, proof.

Some cool online games.

Need to spice up that party? Why not rent a German :-)

Conan O'Brien's Harvard Commencement 2000 speech. My two favorite quotes:

1 - "There is also sadness today, a feeling of loss that you're leaving Harvardforever. Well, let me assure you that you never really leave Harvard. TheHarvard Fundraising Committee will be on your ass until the day you die."

2 - "Proof that, when all else fails, there's always delusion."

An amazing story of a pitcher throwing a no-hitter on acid.

It's hilarious to me when I see commercials for things that have already passed by, Steve Ruble points us to an online ad for New York's 2012 bid that ran next to the Paris victory story:



Here's some more ad bloopers.

Why?

Oh fuck, it's begun: explosions in London, witnesses tell their story, Tony Blair's statement, story updates.

Rain In Paris?

We're all still mourning yesturday's Paris 2012 bid loss, even the sky is crying! I might go down to the park and pick me up some Paris 2012 cheapo merchandise which will go great for parties in France for generations to come :-) (Grandma got this one in)

In the Mud

Scammed this pic from the Glastonbury festival, thank god this wasn't the scene last weekend at Le Mans! That guy in the red shirt with the beer is totally the man, swamp water floods the camp, no matter... SAVE THE BEER!



Let's just give Thursday a bug Yippie shall we! I'm in a weird mood today, can't ya tell ;-)

All That's Left Is Tears

Well the competition is over, looks like EuroRoss came in a strong secondish, similar to Paris's 2012 bid ;-) Thanks to Jeremy for the kind words and congrats to Jason Looney's blog for winning, I'm sure it was a total fluke that your blog beat mine ;-) Man... this loss just clenches my ass! :-)

Cookie Monster

Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?



German stole the cookies from the cookie jar!<

Wednesday Afternoon Funnies

Paris lost the bid, it's crappy weather outside, I've got tons of crap to sort through and I'm coming down with a cold... it's time for a pick-me-up. Here's some things to help make us all smile today :-)

Vince Vaugh is the man, here's he and Owen Wilson's bit at the MTV movie awards this year. Putfile's also got some funny Superbowl commercials from last year, the Budlight one is priceless!

Hilarious:



And finally, the quote of the day:

"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading" - Paul Hornung

Enjoy the rest of your day everyone!

Update: Somehow this didn't actually post correctly yesturday, so enjoy for your Thurs instead :-)

Le Mans Finale

After our long night team sessions morning arrived with a renewed energy as the finish was in sight. Look at Rossi warming up with some ramp action ;-) Here's some of the team hanging around the pits:



This was our batton transition station, check out our "partner" team in the yellow and orange jerseys :-)



The spirit of cooperation throughout the weekend was truely impressive. It wasn't 600 teams competing against each other, it was 600 teams working in unison to best the track, our personal times and overall enjoyment:



Here's our anchor rolling over the finish line. Our team swayed from as high as 250th to as low as almost 400th and in the end we ended up a respectible 338 (for a rookie team). We've now set the bar for next year which we for sure will best now that we've acquired some tricks and experience!



Canada represents!



At the end we all had a little fun on the track:



I guess that huge snoz of a nose comes in handy sometimes! ;-)



Team "Les Roule Hot Rillettes Peppers":



Thanks again to team captain and organiser Flash Leconte and the rest of the team for a tremendous weekend of fun! A bientot mes amies!

Confederation Cup

The Confederation Cup is the soccer tournament that's held one year prior to the World Cup to get teams and venues ready for the real deal. It's a good thing too since the roof of the Franfurt stadium where the final was held actually broke under the heavy rain and spiled down buckets of water into one of the field corners, gotta get a patch on that eh!

So German hooked us up with tickets to the final months ago and although we were obviously hoping that Germany would be in the final, having the huge rivals Brazil-Argentina wasn't a too bad second choice ;-) The Germany game was on right before the final so we jetted on over to the Frankfurt airport (one stop away from the stadium) to watch the first game so we'd be able to get to the game in time after Germany played. This is us in the basement Irish pub at the airport:



The Frankfurt stadium is brand new and beautiful, not a bad seat in the house:



The only thing more gorgeous than these two studs was Ronaldinho's amazing play:



In the end Brazil steamrolled Argentina, but the crowd atmosphere was electric and the above average number of goals provided ample substitute for not having a close match:



On the way home we had to stop by the airport again to pick up a care package from mommy and daddy from Air Canada Cargo... gotta love those home made cookies! (the package didn't even survive the 45 minute train ride back to Darmstadt!)



Well here's to Germany saving the big win for next years tourni!!

Drum Roll Please

Who will it be? Prior to this week my money was on London, they haven't had it in a long time and I thought their bid made sence, Moskow and Madrid never had a chance, NY might have made it a three horse race had they been more organised and unified. Now being in Paris this week I've gotta go with the favorites Paris for the win, it's their Olypmics to lose. What's all this talk about London and NY joining forces for votes to push London over the top? Anyways the decision comes down in about an hour so we'll see!




Update: It's down to two, Paris and London just as predicted... ALLEEE!!!!

Update 2: L-O-N-D-O-N-!-!-! London pulls it out of the fire and blows by Paris in the final sprint! It's going to be a sad day here in Paris, too bad cus the parties in the city tonight would have rocked if they had won ;-)

Le Mans - Let The Race Begin!

Before the qualifying and race began, during the afternoon 5000+ roller bladers took a 8km city tour of Le Mans. The scenery was cool and the people even cooler, many dressed up in funny costumes. Here's my favorite (quicktime required): Fat Man Rolling

The pits started filling up about an hour before qualifying:


Qualifying, 8-10 racers per heat, one rep per team, time trial overall standings:



The bulk of our team hung out way up in the grandstand to chear on our racer:



Just taking in the view... hilarious!



Our master of qualification taking on the competition in his heat.

After qualifying and the city tour the team retired to theh pits to plan our strategy and check the lap times:



Then the race began!

Twenty-four hours of roller blading divided amoung teams of up to 10 is terribly exhausting! Our strategy was an initial rotation between all 10 members for the first 3-4 hours, 3-4 member teams in 3 hour shifts over the evening, 2 hour team shifts the following morning and a team cycle for the remaining 3 hours. I way in group C, so after doing 4 laps in the opening session I took to the tent to get 5 hours of sleep before my 4:30am shift started, damn it was cold!



At one point we were ranked as high as 270, but we fell well past that to approx. 380 (out of over 600) by the time the heat of the next day set in:


How did it all end? The finale tomorrow...

Le Mans Memories of Glory

Well I've finally sorted through the 100+ pics and videos from our amazing weekend at the "24 Rollers" race in Le Mans... and yes I'm still recovering ;-) I'm going to split the pics/vids into three posts to hopefully avoid breaking your browsers when you load the page ;-) (if you can't see the pics and instead see a small box with a red "X" just right click your mouse on the box and choose "show picture" and it should load). Ok so without further ado:

This is a grumpy Ross in Le Mans at 7 AM since we arrived past the 2AM curfew to the camping groups and had to sleep in the car, bleh! The date/time stamp for all pics are off, I still haven't gotten around to fixing that yet. Actually we jumped the fence to get to the rest of the group but a huge black guy with a flashlight and the threat of "unleasing the hounds" made us accept our fate and scamper back over the wall. For the record, yes that's Nutella I'm speading on, at 7AM anything looks good ;-)



Gettin' the site up and running, thanks to the rest of the team for going ahead early and setting these up for us!



The entrance to the speedway, much much too early in the morning:



The team... lookout fellow Le Mans competitors!



More to follow...

Faster Than The Speed Of Light

After suffering through no connectivity over the weekend and tortuous 56k dial-up prior I was finally able to set up high speed here in Paris. Curious to see how good the pipe was I fired up the P2P. Usually taking up to an hour before a trickle download begins with my Pforzheim connection (it warms up over time to around 15-30 KBps after a day of continuous running or so) which is the same price as the N9UF service here, I was absolutely knocked off my socks to see this after only 10 minutes:



I've seen it get as high as 166 with a running average of over 100 consistently. Drool... who says Paris is the city of romance, it should be known as the city of connectivity! Unless maybe they were talking about digital love ;-)

Ain't Nothin' Goinna Break My Stride

Your daily pee your pants funny, just wait till the music and their run kicks in.



Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh no, I've got to keep on movin'
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch ground
Oh no, I've got to keep on movin'

Big Ups

Congradulations to my fellow colleagues and close friends who had their grad ceramonies on Friday. We've had such a great eventful one/two year/s together, you've definatly raised the bar academically, professionally and personally. A toast to your continued success and happiness in the future lads!

Line Of The Day

Why would you pound your hand with a hammer repeatedly?



Because it feels so good when you stop.

24 Hours of Rollerblading = 48 Hours of Pain

I'm back! Online anyways, if not in Pforzheim itself. Just got back from Le Mans where we had the 24 hour roller blading race. Having a 10 person team fight the rigours of a continuous 24 hour relay race is terrific fun, and killer on the leg muscles. When walking up OR down stairs makes you feel sore you know you've had a good workout fin semain ;-)

What an amazing weekend, many thanks to Grandma for being a wonder woman of planning and to the team for putting up with my terrible half-French Quebecois and making the weekend truely special.



Pics and commentary rundown to follow once I've gotten through critical e-mails which are now downloading onto my laptop from a crappy 56k connection, 101, 102... and counting.

Vivre La France

After a crazy night in Frankfurt watching Brazil beat Argentina 4-1 in the Confederation Cup (more on that later) and having the roof of the stadium break under the weight of tarential rain, an early morning wakeup, 10 hours of travel (including 2 hours just getting inside the city itself) I've finally arrived in Paris! My stay here is not going to be much longer than the time it'll take to get a panini since I'm off to the 24 roller race in Le Mans tonight :-) Posts will be sporatic for the weekend henceforth, bonnes journe!